


Fixer

by Rhanon_Brodie (Glass_Jacket)



Category: Arctic Monkeys, British Singers RPF, Indie Music RPF
Genre: M/M, One Shot, Photography, Slash, Tumblr Prompt, self indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 11:47:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4875709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glass_Jacket/pseuds/Rhanon_Brodie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I am unfiltered in your grasp, and await the exposure of your embrace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fixer

**Author's Note:**

> Based loosely on an anon prompt who wanted, "smol cute model Alex" and Jamie as a photographer; I kind of missed the mark with the 'smol, cute' factor, but I had fun writing this nonetheless. References to photography and the process of developing film; I took photography for a semester in high school so I'm working from murky memory and wikipedia. I should probably be working on Kodachrome, but sometimes WIPs take a backseat when inspiration strikes. At least I'm writing everyday - that's how I look at it.

“When are you gonna let me take your picture, Al?”

Alex groaned in exasperation, and rolled towards the bedside table where he’d dropped his phone and his cigarettes. He checked the time and then lit up, moving to his back once more, blowing a wave of smoke overhead with a sigh, and closing his eyes.

“M’not,” he answered, feeling the bed shift as the man beside him moved around. Cracking an eye open he found that Jamie was staring at him with an expectant look.

“Why are you so adamant about that?” Jamie’s brows furrowed.

“Because I loathe being a cliche,” Alex summed up, closing his eye and resuming his smoking.

Jamie snorted and tugged the cigarette from Alex’s lips, and took a few puffs. “So...being a brooding Classics major who knows four dead languages better most people know their mother tongue, travelling in small groups of one, wearing vintage sweaters and horn-rimmed glasses, and drinking flat whites three square meals a day, and smoking like a chimney doesn’t make you a cliche?”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Alex offered flippantly. He sat up, snatched the cigarette back from Jamie, and tucked it into the corner of his mouth. Swinging his legs off of the bed, he found his boxers and tugged them on before standing, and stretching.

“Can you at least try and explain it to me, then?”

Alex grinned ruefully. “I don’t fancy bein’ another one o’your faces on a wall, James. A face that you fucked and photographed, or photographed an’ then fucked. It’s all the same, you know? The intimacy of it, and the false settings behind. Everything’s under a filter, and photoshopped.”

Jamie blinked as the lithe, young man padded around the small apartment, tugging one of Jamie’s discarded shirts on before moving to the crate where Jamie’s vinyl collection sat. Squatting down on lean legs, Alex let his cigarette burn at the corner of his mouth as he flicked through the albums.

“It’s an interesting theory,” Jamie admitted, turning onto his front and watching Alex sift through his belongings. If there was one thing that Jamie had figured out in the last month they’d been having their casual affair, it was that Alex was an observer, and a thinker, prone to long periods of contemplation. He didn’t talk much, but when he did, he said some of the most engaging things. Combined with his dark good looks, flawless skin, and the mystery in his expressions, Alex Turner was an artist’s dream. Jamie had been asking to photograph him since the day they met off campus in a bookstore, a book of Ansel Adams tucked under Jamie’s arm, and a stack of Homer and Ovid balanced on one of Alex’s forearms as he sipped a flat white and perused the shelves.

He’d dumped Ovid at Jamie’s feet that first day, flustered and a little perturbed that his bubble had been burst, and Jamie hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he’d distracted Alex, and set him off kilter, something he guessed Alex wasn’t familiar with in the least.

Still, Alex kept coming round after midnight, or in the early afternoons, to play vinyl and drink import beer, and lazily fuck each other until the sun set, or rose, depending on the situation. Slowly, Alex was losing one part of his mystery, but developing a new one, and Jamie loved that he was kept guessing.

Finally, Alex made a decision in terms of vinyl, and pulled the record from the crate, gently slipping the disc from its sleeve. He set it on the turntable and dropped the needle. The speakers next to Jamie’s bed were filled with the gentle _thump-whir-schick!_ that only comes from vinyl recordings, and soon enough, _Freedom At 21_ by Jack White filtered in, a plunk of bass introducing a solid, rolling drum riff. Jamie smiled at the garage sound, and Jack White’s voice, and watched as Alex stood and closed his eyes, dark hair falling over his eyes. His lips moved with White’s lyrics, and when the guitars began, Alex went with it, hips moving, feet pacing, face twisting into expressions brought on by whatever thoughts the music provoked. 

It was no coincidence that Jamie kept an old Pentax with actual film next to his bed - opportunity and inspiration struck him without warning, at any time of day. He reached down and pulled the camera from the cubby of his side table, unscrewed the lens cap, and raised it, seeking Alex through the viewfinder. Adjusting the focus, he framed Alex, dark hair swinging, face turned towards the late afternoon light coming from the window, lips soft, expression softer. Jamie pushed the shutter button, and then did it again, and again, a dozen shots before he thought wise to stop, lest Alex catch him taking his photograph without permission. Setting the camera aside, Jamie grinned and rose from the bed to stalk across the room and capture his subject.

It startled Alex, but he barely stopped moving, and instead swung into Jamie’s embrace, his fingers walking up the firm muscles of forearms, and his face tipping towards Jamie’s. A handful of kisses later and they were on the bed, the small amount of clothing they donned becoming useless, as they woke to each other’s senses once more.

+

The red shroud of mystery the dark room provided was what Jamie loved the most. Seeing things through the viewfinder was but one of many ways he found beauty, but the true surprise came when he’d slipped into the silence and the darkness, wound the film into its canister and mixed chemicals to make his work come to life. Once he’d developed negatives and exposed them, he would carefully bathe them in developer, followed by a stop bath and a fixer, finally rinsing and hanging them to dry. Watching images appear in the developer was the highlight; stories came to life amid the acrid waft of chemicals.

It had been about four days since he’d taken pictures of Alex, and he was anxious to develop, but rushing the process would only serve to damage the printed record, and what he hoped to be a reveal of Alex lost in his own thoughts. When the negatives were processed and ready for exposure, Jamie found that there were several shots he didn’t remember taking, but he printed them anyway, unable to really make out what they were. It added to the surprise; he figured once they were properly developed, he’d remember when and why he took them. 

After exposure, he moved about developing twenty four prints. A handful of them were black and whites taken on a rainy afternoon, different faces reacting to the weather - children’s faces upturned from underneath slickers and umbrellas, furrowed brows hidden beneath the corner of a jacket or newspaper as an impromptu shelter. Next came the dozen he’d taken of Alex. Each time the young man’s features faded into stark contrast made Jamie smile, and made his mind wander. It made him yearn for the younger man in a way he hadn’t really experienced before. Perhaps it was the tilt of his head, or the line of his mouth, or the angle of his nose; it was more likely a combination of all those things. Each shot captured something slightly different, and Jamie paused to wonder if perhaps Alex had embodied one of the many muses he studied on a daily basis - Calliope, maybe, or Thalia. Jamie certainly felt inspired at any rate.

The next photos that came to light in their acrid bath made him pause. He hadn’t taken these - there was no way he could have, because they were of him. His heart pounded madly as he tried to remember the moment, but realised, as he tilted his head and studied one print, that he’d been subject to his own lens by clever-fingered hands that belonged to a certain dark-eyed Classics student. He’d recognize that kneecap next to his ribcage anywhere, having mapped the solid bone with his fingertips and mouth too many times to count over the last month. The pictures were of him in repose, dozing after they prolonged climax and instead tuned into the tempo of the Jack White record Alex had put on. Jamie had woken to an empty apartment, and a note on a scrap of paper torn from the bottom of a student newspaper: 

_I am unfiltered in your grasp, and await the exposure of your embrace._

Looking back to the pictures he now rinsed and hung, he saw himself from Alex’s view: he was light, and flesh, rounded muscle, his hirsuteness an obvious point of pleasure as there were frames of his beard, his chest, the backs of his thighs, the crook of his armpit. It turned him on, which surprised him, and excited him, the fact that Alex had taken these pictures without permission, but with every intention of Jamie finding them. It was like a love note etched in silver, awash in alkali. There in the darkroom, he felt his blood rushing to stiffen his cock. It was ironic, erotically so - the very reason why he wanted to photograph Alex was now being applied to him, and the results were proving to intoxicate.

+

One a.m. brought the gentle rap of knuckles on Jamie’s door, and like Pavlov’s dog, Jamie sat up from where he’d been sprawled on his bed, reading, and cocked his ear. Already his heart was racing, and he glanced at the table where he’d spread the pictures of himself out - he’d found himself returning to look at them since they’d dried and he’d brought them home late that afternoon - and then back to the door. The shots of Alex were tucked away in a folder with his other work. But the images were burned into his brain, and he recalled the euphoric expression that toed the line of ecstasy as Alex had lost himself to the music. Jamie moved to the door and opened it to lean against the frame and look at Alex.

“James,” Alex drawled, clearly a bit pissed, perhaps a little high, but nothing Jamie hadn’t seen before. If anything, it made Alex a little less broody.

“Alex,” Jamie greeted back with a smile. “Coming or going?” 

Alex smirked, and cocked an eyebrow, and situated himself between Jamie and the doorframe. “Coming,” he murmured, curling his fingers into the soft chambray of Jamie’s button down. “Again, and again, and again, if I get my way.”

“Don’t you always?” Jamie whispered, leaning down with Alex’s urging, and angling his mouth against Alex’s.

They pressed tongues and teeth, tasted one another with slippery sounds, until Alex growled and his hips banged into Jamie’s. Threading his fingers into the blond waves of Jamie’s hair, Alex pulled their mouths apart with a gasp, and stared at Jamie’s mouth. “I’ve never kissed anyone wiv a beard before. I’ve a piece of your virility in me mouf, an’ it tastes of the Nemean Lion.”

Jamie cocked an eyebrow. “Classics department mixer?”

“It were fookin’ awful, mate.” Alex paused and reached into his coat, and produced a bottle of Prosecco. “But not a complete loss. Let me in, an’ we’ll celebrate my escape.”

+

“Aren’t you going to ask me?” Alex asked the darkness, his tongue still fizzing from the boozing and bruising. He groaned and stretched beside Jamie, turned to his stomach and spread his fingers over Jamie’s belly.

“Ask you what?”

“When you can take me picture.”

“You’ll say no,” Jamie smiled.

“Ask me anyway.”

Jamie chuckled and shook his head, and twisted his body until he was on his knees. Alex flipped to his back at the same moment, smiling as Jamie arranged himself with a knee on either side of his prone body. The smaller lad panted, sweating in the cooling air, nipples tight and face dewy. His cock, though spent, was still thick with blood, and lay against the inside of his thigh. 

Jamie's voice rumbled with his next question, “What changed your mind?”

Alex hummed, his dark eyes shining, and his fingers wandered over Jamie’s thighs. “I liked it. I liked taking pictures of you. I liked the way you looked, the way you made me feel as I captured you, exposed you. Is that what you like? Bringing things to light and exposing them?”

“I like solving mysteries,” Jamie carefully answered. His gaze wandered down Alex’s body, and his breathing intensified. “Or thinking I can.” Alex turned his face away, and the shadows did their duty. Jamie let out a breath. “But you’re elusive, and perhaps you always will be.”

“Does that mean you’ll keep taking pictures?”

“If you’ll let me,” Jamie admitted.

“Ask me.”

Jamie took a breath and in a flash leaned down, lips flush with Alex’s, his broad palm pushing the damp length of dark hair from Alex’s forehead. “No,” Jamie growled, before taking Alex’s mouth with another rough kiss.

Alex whined and wrenched his mouth free with a grunt. “Ask me,” he panted, slipping his hand between their pelvises to find Jamie’s erection returning with speed. Humming with desire, Alex leaned up, and caught Jamie’s lip with his teeth. “Ask me,” he repeated.

Fingers tightened in Alex’s hair as the younger lad worked to bring Jamie’s cock back to full attention. “You don’t play fair,” Jamie pointed out, his eyes slipping shut at the sudden wash of pleasure through his veins.

“Then fuck me, Jameh,” Alex groaned, thighs opening as Jamie maneuvered between them. “Fuck me, an’ then ask me, when you’re deep an’ can’t get any further. I wanna see what you see when you look at me.”

In the tight inferno of Alex’s body, Jamie rose up over the lad and stared down, his fingers walking along the bed to where his camera was stashed on the table. “Let me take your picture,” Jamie murmured, rolling his hips forward at such an angle that Alex’s head went back, throat exposed, his mouth open as his eyes fluttered closed. Jaime raised the camera, and hovered his finger over the shutter, framing the shot with Alex’s face, hair spread on the pillow.

“Yes,” Alex breathed.

The shutter _click-click-clicked_ long into the night.


End file.
